About

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University with appointments at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Her research involves developing a systems-level model of brain and body mechanisms to unify human affect, emotion, motivation, cognition, and action. She takes a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating methods and concepts from psychology, neuroscience, physiology, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, evolutionary and developmental biology, computer science, engineering, and the history of science. Dr. Barrett has received numerous awards, including an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for transformative research, the Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association (APA). She is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, and other honorific societies, and has served as a former president of the APS. Her work has been recognized as highly influential, with her inclusion among the top one percent most cited scientists in the world. She actively engages in public science education through popular books, articles, and public lectures, and has testified before the US Congress.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Computer Science
• Cognitive psychology
• Cognitive science
• Social psychology
• Sociology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Science
• Communication
• Chemistry
• Epistemology
• Biology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Validation of a Region-Specific Approach to CSF Artifact Correction in Subcortical 7T fMRI

  2026-05-08

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Exploring Theory-Laden Observations in the Brain Basis of Emotional Experience

  ArXiv.org · 2025-06-30

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  In the science of emotion, it is widely assumed that folk emotion categories form a biological and psychological typology, and studies are routinely designed and analyzed to identify emotion-specific patterns. This approach shapes the observations that studies report, ultimately reinforcing the assumption that guided the investigation. Here, we reanalyzed data from one such typologically-guided study that reported mappings between individual brain patterns and group-averaged ratings of 34 emotion categories. Our reanalysis was guided by an alternative view of emotion categories as populations of variable, situated instances, and which predicts a priori that there will be significant variation in brain patterns within a category across instances. Correspondingly, our analysis made minimal assumptions about the structure of the variance present in the data. As predicted, we did not observe the original mappings and instead observed significant variation across individuals. These findings demonstrate how starting assumptions can ultimately impact scientific conclusions and suggest that a hypothesis must be supported using multiple analytic methods before it is taken seriously.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Structured variation in daily life experience within and across individuals

  2025-07-17

  articleOpen access

  Human experience varies across contexts and individuals. Yet, psychological studies typically constrain rather than discover this structured variation. We demonstrate an alternative approach that samples deeply and broadly to discover reliable person-specific, multimodal patterns of daily life experience. Ninety-seven healthy adults wore cardiac monitors for 8 hours/day for 14 days and reported current valence, arousal, primary activity, social context, and emotions (via free report) when prompted following a substantial cardiac interbeat interval change (and twice randomly each day). From each event (10,755 total, M=110.9 events/person), we extracted cardiovascular, postural, affective, and contextual features. Integrative clustering of these features identified 313 multimodal patterns (M=3.2 patterns/person), which were largely person-specific, with 81.7% of patterns being unique to one person. The pattern-distinguishing features also varied by person. Finally, self-generated emotion labels had many-to-many mappings with multimodal patterns. Our approach has broad utility and provides further evidence that emotions are diverse populations of instances.

  PublisherDOI

• It’s not the thought that counts: Allostasis at the core of brain function

  Neuron · 2025-10-15 · 17 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cortical and subcortical mapping of the human allostatic–interoceptive system using 7 Tesla fMRI

  Nature Neuroscience · 2025-10-23 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  The brain continuously anticipates the body's energetic needs and prepares to meet them before they arise-a process called allostasis. To support allostasis, the brain continually models the body's sensory state, a process known as interoception. Here we replicate and extend a large-scale system that supports allostasis and interoception in the human brain using ultrahigh precision 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (n = 90), improving precision in subgenual and pregenual anterior cingulate topography and expanding brainstem nuclei mapping. Our functional connectivity analyses provide corroborating evidence for more than 96% of the anatomical connections documented in nonhuman animal tract-tracing studies. This system also includes regions of dense intrinsic connectivity throughout the system, some of which were identified previously as part of the backbone of neural communication across the brain. These results reinforce the existing evidence for a whole-brain system that supports the modeling and regulation of the body's internal milieu.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Theory of Constructed Emotion: More Than a Feeling

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2025-05-01 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A recently published article by van Heijst et al. attempted to reconcile two research approaches in the science of emotion—basic emotion theory and the theory of constructed emotion—by suggesting that the former explains emotions as bioregulatory states of the body whereas the latter explains feelings that arise from those state changes. This bifurcation of emotion into objective physical states and subjective feelings involves three misleading simplifications that fundamentally misrepresent the theory of constructed emotion and prevent progress in the science of emotion. In this article we identify these misleading simplifications and the resulting factual errors, empirical oversights, and evolutionary oversimplifications. We then discuss why such errors will continue to arise until scientists realize that the two theories are intrinsically irreconcilable. They rest on incommensurate assumptions and require different methods of evaluation. Only by directly considering these differences will these research silos in the science of emotion finally dissolve, speeding the accumulation of trustworthy scientific knowledge about emotion that is usable in the real world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Theory of Constructed Emotion: More Than a Feeling

  2025-01-23 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A recently published paper by van Heijst, Kret and Ploeger (2024) attempts to reconcile tworesearch traditions in the science of emotion — basic emotion theory and the theory of constructedemotion — by suggesting that the former explains emotions as bioregulatory states of the bodywhereas the latter explains feelings that arise from those state changes. This bifurcation of emotioninto objective physiological states and subjective feeling involves three misleading simplificationsthat fundamentally misrepresent the theory of constructed emotion. Our commentary identifiesthese misleading simplifications and the resulting factual errors, empirical oversights, andevolutionary oversimplifications. We then discuss why such errors will continue to arise untilscientists realize that the two theories are intrinsically irreconcilable. They rest on incommensurateassumptions and require different methods of evaluation. Only by directly considering thesedifferences will these research silos in the science of emotion finally dissolve, speeding theaccumulation of trustworthy scientific knowledge about emotion that is usable in the real world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Future of Women in Psychological Science

  UNC Libraries · 2025-06-27

  articleOpen access

  There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field's investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women's career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.

  PublisherDOI

• Author Correction: Context-aware experience sampling reveals the scale of variation in affective experience

  UNC Libraries · 2025-05-30

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Mitoception Via the Metabokine GDF15 and Human Health

  2025-12-16

  articleOpen access

  To survive and thrive, living organisms must monitor and regulate cell-level energy supply, demand, and transformation. They do so through a brain-directed interoceptive process we refer to as “metaboception.” Here, we describe a specific metaboceptive signaling cascade mediated by the metabokine/cytokine growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), which we name “mitoception.” Mitoception involves an afferent signaling arm initiated by the integrative stress response (ISR), and an efferent signaling arm that simultaneously promotes energy conservation and fuel mobilization. Afferent mitoceptive signaling is mediated by GDF15 released when cells face energy demand in excess of their energy transformation capacity, creating an “energy gap”. Efferent mitoceptive signaling arises when GDF15 receptors in the brainstem receive the signal and initiate psychological experiences including fatigue and anxiety, together with neuroendocrine stress responses. Mitoceptive outputs thus reprioritize systemic energy metabolism to promote allostasis, survival, and long-term health. The proposed GDF15-driven mitoception cascade makes predictions about modifiable processes that shape disease risk, mental health, mood, resilience, well-being, and aging.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• The Affective Vision Hypothesis

  NSF · $300k · 2011–2015

• Biopsychosocial Mechanisms of Successful Aging

  NIH · $3.9M · 2022–2027

• Affect regulation and Beta Amyloid: Maturational Factors in Aging and Age-Related Pathology

  NIH · $4.2M · 2017–2024

• Collaborative Proposal: DHB -The Dynamics of Affective Learning

  NSF · $604k · 2005–2009

• Ovarian Effects on Intrinsic Connectivity and the Affective Enhancement of Memory

  NIH · $3.5M · 2017–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Bradford C. Dickerson

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  321 shared

• Karen S. Quigley

  Northeastern University

  291 shared

• Alexandra Touroutoglou

  279 shared

• Joseph M. Andreano

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  147 shared

• Jordan E. Theriault

  Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging

  116 shared

• Moshe Bar

  100 shared

• Kestutis Kveraga

  Hadassah Medical Center

  99 shared

• Ajay B. Satpute

  97 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Texas at Austin

  1996

• M.A., Psychology

  University of Texas at Austin

  1993

• B.A., Psychology

  University of Texas at Austin

  1990

Awards & honors

• NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for transformative research
• Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association f…
• Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the America…
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada